Chili

This is our favourite chili recipe. It was originally a knock off of the Wendy’s chili recipe, though we’ve made it our own. Enjoy!

Ingredients

2 pounds ground beef cooked and drain the fat (You can substitute double the beans for the beef if you want to keep this vegetarian)
One 29-ounce can tomato sauce
One 29-ounce can kidney beans (with liquid)
One 29-ounce can black beans (with liquid)
1 cup diced onion (1 medium onion)
1/2 cup diced green chilis (1 small can of chilis)
1/2 cup diced celery (2 stalks)
1 1/2 cups corn niblets
3 medium tomatoes (Fresh or 1 big can diced tomatoes)
2 teaspoons cumin powder
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons salt

Directions

Combine all of the ingredients in a large slow cooker and let it simmer for 12 hours. Be sure to include the liquid from the corn, beans, tomatoes and chilis. We often leave the slow cooker on low over night with the lid closed and then turn it up to high the next day so it’s ready for dinner. While it’s on high keep the lid open a bit so it’ll reduce and make sure you stir it every hour or so.

You could also cook this in a big pot, just make sure it has a nice thick bottom and also stir the chili more frequently.

Lately we’ve been making our cornbread recipe to go with the chili.

Cornbread Recipe

I’ve been making this cornbread recipe for the past few months and people seem to LOVE it! So here it is for you to try out yourself.

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk (Soy milk also works)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 can corn niblets (about 1 cup)

Directions

1. Combine the milk and cornmeal in a bowl. Stir it up and let it soak for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan.
3. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Stir in egg, milk, vegetable oil, corn niblets, cornmeal and milk mixture until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cornbread comes out clean.
5. Let the cornbread cool for a few minutes and then flip it onto a cooling rack.

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

We hope you all had a nice relaxing weekend. Here are a couple of Tyler’s latest video’s. Have a great week!

Valentine’s Cookie Chocolate Face

Tyler Singing Her ABC’s

Tyler Singing

Here’s a quick video of Tyler doing her little dance for Beyonce’s song “Single Ladies”. Enjoy! We hope everyone’s getting to enjoy the nice weather out there. I also posted a bunch of pictures from our latest adventures.

Happy New Year & Some Video Updates

Happy New Year everyone. We’ve had some videos sitting around waiting to be posted so here they are. We have a crazy one of Grover and a bunch from Disneyland. Enjoy!

Tyler Goes for a Walk with Cinderella

Tyler on Her Favourite Ride – Monsters Inc

Tyler Freaking Out at the Disney Street Party

Tyler Giving Mickey a BIG Hug

Grover Going Nuts

Addictive Rocky Road Fudge Bars

WARNING: These are addictive!!

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c. chocolate chips
1 1/2 c. creamy peanut butter

3/4 c. butter
1 bag miniature marshmallows
1 c. finely chopped walnuts (Optional, though they definitely make them better)

Directions:

Line an 8×12 or 2 8×8 baking pans with parchment paper or wax paper. Fill the pans with marshmallows and the chopped nuts.

Melt butter in medium saucepan over low heat. Add peanut butter to melted butter. Partially melt the peanut butter and then add the chocolate chips. Stir frequently to blend mixture thoroughly until completely melted.

Pour the chocolate mixture over everything and then work it into the marshmallows with a spatula to make sure everything gets covered with chocolate.

Allow to chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving. Okay, maybe 30 minutes if you can’t handle the wait.

NOTE: Bars should be kept refrigerated or else they’ll get really soft, which isn’t a bad thing at all. They’re easier to eat that way.

dreeeeeaaaammms cooooooooomme trrrrrrrruuuuue!!!

Half an hour of silence (and presumably sleep) then over the monitor we hear:

“….your dreams come truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue! …..Once upon a time Princess Tyler sang a song and her dreeeeeeeeeeeaaaammms cooooooooommmme trrrrrrruuuue! And Princess Bunny dreams come truuuuuee toooooooooooooo!!!…I love you in the evening and under the mooooooooonnnn! I love you and Scruffy too! Skinnamerikkki-dinki-do – iiiiiiiiiiii loooooooooooove youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! Dreeeeeeeeeeams cooooommme truuuuuuuue!!!!…..”

Then she rolled over and went to sleep.  I couldn’t have a more perfect ending to my perfectly laid-back birthday.  And here I didn’t think she could top our nightly walk to look at Christmas lights (seriously magical when accompanied by a 2-and-a-half-year-old), our cuddled up reading of a Christmas Carol, and our 10 minute tuck-in of endless hugs, kisses, !zurrrrrbitttts! (raspberries to those outside our inner circle), and I love you’s.  She never ceases to amaze me and affix the smiles on my face.

Bring on the next 30 years – if they’re anything like the last then I’ll count myself insanely lucky!

Now I’m off to go cuddle with my cutie hubby – like I said: lucky.

Christmas is Coming!!

So yeah, it’s been a CRAZY busy summer and fall and well our old blog software wasn’t that easy to post with so I upgraded to Wordpress. I’m not saying you’ll see a lot more posts, but I can guarantee that you’ll see more regular photo updates.

Onto the update. There was a bunch of stuff this summer. I went Mountain Biking at Silverstar with the guys and had a great time though I ended up rolling my ankle on the first day, though I toughed it out the second day, but paid for that for a month and half as it healed. Dang that hurts.

We had a GREAT trip up to Grandpa Gilbert’s. Tyler got to play in the garden lots, went on a bungee trampoline and got to go to the game farm up there.

The HUGE news for the summer was that we went to DISNEYLAND!!!! We went with Casey and our friends Mark & Laura and their kids Taye & Nya. We had so much fun! Especially Tyler. She got to wear her princess dress lots and LOVED everything about the trip. Especially the characters and rides. We’ll definitely be going back one day!

After that it was a bunch of work around the house. We laid a new portion of our concrete sidewalk and then re-coated the fir floors in the house. Both projects worked out really well.

And now we come up to today’s news. We have a new furry member of the family named Grover. Yes Grover like the Muppet and the Monster At the End of This Book. He’s an 8 week old Welsh Terrier that we got from Darwyn Welsh Terriers in Mission of all places. There are only a few registered breeders in Canada and one of them happened to be 10 minutes from our house. They’re great people and breed some AMAZING Welsh Terriers. We have already posted some pictures and will have lots more to come.

That’s about it for now. We’ll have weekly photo updates and you might even see a blog post or two. We hope everyone’s getting into the Christmas spirit. We already have the Christmas music going in the car and have the Christmas lights up.

Thanks for Partying with Us!

Thank you to everyone for partying with us for Tyler’s 2nd birthday! Tyler had a great time with all of her “buddies” as she would say. She also said to say “Thank you much!” for all of the presents. I’ll be posting pictures over the next few days and I’ll also put up the recipe for the cake/icing. It was definitely a great find and one that I’ll use in the future. I hope everyone had a great rest of your weekends! We enjoyed a great day in White Rock with a nice picnic, some shopping and an ice cream faced Tyler walking down the pier.

Tyler’s First Sail on Papa’s Boat

Tyler took her first sail on Papa’s new 34” sailboat last weekend and LOVED every minute of it. The kid was CRAZY about the water and fearless about walking around the boat. She didn’t care how much the boat was bobbing around, she wanted to be right at the edge checking everything out. And when she got to see a critter in the water she went nuts! We saw porpoises, seals (puppies as Tyler called them) and lots of birds. This was Tyler’s initial test run on the boat. I would definitely call it a SUCCESS and we’ll definitely be going for many more sailing trips this summer.